We spent another full day enjoying ourselves on the West Virginia adventure. Our first activity was taking a tour of the Lost World Caverns. I think everyone was in awe as we walked down the path deep into the huge cavern. We had a two-hour guided tour that was excellent. Along the way we were able to complete the requirements for an "EarthCache," a type of geocache. We had hoped to do more geocaching on this trip but just ran out of time.

No photos will do justice to the awesome sites inside of Lost World Caverns.

Thomas and Linus with their gemstones.

After our cavern tour the boys tried their hand at gemstone mining and in just a few minutes each had a bag of some pretty impressive rocks to bring home. And then they hit the gift shop and pretty much made the owners' day. We really hadn't had any opportunities to do any souvenir hunting on this trip so this was a good stop.

From Lost World Caverns we went back into Lewisburg for lunch and another one of our "earned" treats for receiving yet another sincere compliment and then we decided to go bowling once more for our afternoon activity. Today was the first day we had any rain that "could" have interrupted our activity plans but it really didn't get in the way. Bowling took us up to dinner. We decided to try a local pizza establishment called Giovanni's and weren't disappointed.

And finally, back to the hotel to pack and then have a final "junk food & swim party" hosted by Chapman Mann. Boys enjoyed swimming one last time and actually didn't pig out all that much on the candy and other snacks donated by Chapman and the other boys.

It has been an excellent week. The kids have been great and I hope i'll see all of them again on a future trip.

This time tomorrow we'll be settled into our rooms in Lewisburg, West Virginia with a bunch of excited campers. And for the next several days we'll be hiking, biking, tubing, geocaching, gemstone mining, taking a train ride, and a whole lot more.

We hope you'll return to this page often to follow us so you can read about some of our happenings and see the photos.

The big activity today was our half-day trip on the Yellowstone River. It was hardly a half day, but that didn't matter. All the kids had an absolute blast including navigating the rapids, having a few splash wars, and some nice scenery as the river flows north out of Yellowstone River. It was a very successful trip and moms, all kids are fine.

After lunch at Subway we visited the shops of Gardiner, Montana for an hour. Mid-afternoon was a time to rest and kids had three choices: chill around the motel, go swimming, and/or go geocaching. Some did all three.

Now the day is done and the kids are settling in for the night. Tomorrow is another full day in Yellowstone.

These guys went geocaching this afternoon. They found three geocaches in a row including two micros and an ammo-can cache. We had great fun. Hopefully we'll get to do some more in Cody.

Along the Greenbriar River Trail in West Virginia in 1997, my last trip to this state.

Our trip this coming summer is full steam ahead for a wonderful experience out West in Wyoming & Montana. There's still a couple of spots left, so be in touch if you're interested. And in 2013 we're heading back to Europe for an incredible adventure.

And for the first time in over a dozen years or so, we'll be having two summer trips in 2013. So in addition to Europe we'll be taking a group of boys to West Virginia for what will probably be a one-week trip. We'll base in the Greenbrier River Valley area where we'll take a bike trip along the Greenbrier River Trail (a really nice Rails-to-Trails conversion. We'll go on a scenic train ride, take a raft trip, explore some great hiking trails, do some geocaching, go on a cavern tour, and tour an underground bunker for top government officials that was top secret until just a few years ago. It's apparently so big that it could hold over 1,000 people. That's for starters. The trip will be geared toward younger kids but older boys are always welcome as helpers.

Bridge over the New River Gorge.

Sign-ups for this West Virginia adventure will begin in January 2012 at the same time as the Europe trip sign-ups. If you want to get a head start and make sure you get notified early, go to this page and click the box and submit the form. So tell your friends and start making plans.

Country Roads, take me homeTo the place I belongWest Virginia, mountain mommaTake me home, country roads.

Went geocaching yesterday for the first time since Colorado this summer. This photo was of my 400th geocache found out west. It reminded me of what a great time that trip was and how much fun it was with all those great kids. These four decided to geocache with me instead of going horseback riding. Leader Ray Thompson was with us and he took the photo. We had our own great fun trying to find this geocache before we got caught up in an afternoon thunderstorm. You'll see raindrops on some of the shirts.

This coming summer I'll hope to find my 500th geocache when we're out in Wyoming & Montana. Three of these four boys are already signed up to join me. I can't wait!